Bob, Billye, and the kidsGary, Jeff, and Janapiled into the familys Ford station wagon and drove to the Landa to give it a look. His lawyers would later say he was so confident in the rides safety that on the very day that Caleb was killed, he had brought his wife to the park to ride Verrckt. On a 25-acre piece of property that the Henrys bought, three blocks east of the main park, he erected two rides that he had co-created with a former surfer turned inventor named Tom Lochtefeld. On April 25, 2014, Jeff climbed to the top of the Verrckt tower with Kansas governor Sam Brownback and officials from Guinness World Records, who proclaimed that Verrckt was indeed the tallest waterslide in the world. Something clicked in my head, and I just re. We reported earlier about how their second oldest son, 10-year-old Caleb Schwab, died after an accident on the world's tallest waterslide: the 168-foot Verrckt. As he walked out of the courthouse, his face ashen, a reporter asked if he had any training in engineering or physics. When the slide opened to the public, in July 2014, riders reviews were a publicists dream. That boat flew. Had something gone wrong with the cannon nozzle that shot the raft up the second hill? Today, August 7, is the fifth anniversary of his horrific death in August 2016. Every year, an estimated two million visitors go to the parks to plunge down slides, zoom through twisting tube chutes, and float and swim in man-made rivers and enormous pools. Loretta Racette. But prosecutors for the Kansas attorney generals office persuaded a judge to lock down the ride. I was so happy that Schlitterbahn hired me that I didn't think anything about the tragic accident on the Verrckt water coaster the previous year. Soon, reporters from an array of media outletsUSA Today, Wired, ESPNs Grantland, even Smithsonian magazinewere calling to ask Jeff about his latest adventure, and he was always ready with a good quote. Schwab was elected Kansas secretary of state in November. I remember hearing about the accident on the news and thought that the park was going to shut down. Im not quite sure yet, he replied. Industry veterans nicknamed him the Lord of the Slides and the Wizard of Wet. Plans to expand to other cities have been shelved. We owe it to this childs family, said Nancy Cowles, executive director of Kids in Danger, a nonprofit that works to improve safety related to childrens products. And a man named Norris J. The actor Jeff Henry, who was trying to glamorize the ride, was indicted., Verrckt, he told me, is the state-of-the-art technology. He said he wanted to raise their three children in a small town, just as he had been raised. Jeff never made any secret of how he built his rides. It was as horrible a moment as you could imagine, a person who was there told me. This time, it worked perfectly. Witnesses claimed he went down the first drop, then flew out and hit netting enclosing the ride. During construction, the men had ordered that a net be placed above the chute, propped up every few feet by semicircular poles, to keep people from flying out. Aug. 8 2016, Updated 5:55 p.m. Had there been a problem with the distribution of the three passengers weight that caused the raft to lift off into the air? It was surreal. The idea for Verrckt came from 63-year-old Jeff Henry, who co-owned the Schlitterbahn parks with his older brother, Gary, and younger sister, Jana, and acted as the companys chief visionary, a conjurer of splashy joyrides. It lifted off the chute and went airborne, landing several yards away. A few days later, Jeff ordered that two thirds of the slide be dismantled. It was a gloriously sunny afternoon, the kind tailor-made for Jeffs innocent old vision of summer fun. "His friend was screaming for help and I think that's when staff members and medics and stuff started running.". KANSAS CITY, Kan. As more information comes out about what happened to cause 10-year-old Caleb Schwab's tragic death, the concern over amusement park safety grows. Even those werent enough to save 10-year-old Caleb Schwab, who was decapitated. An engineering firm hired to inspect the ride right before its opening also issued a damning report that said it "guaranteed that rafts would occasionally go airborne in a manner that could severely injure or kill the occupants.. And in Kansas City, even those who cared little for water or who couldnt afford Schlitterbahns $45 admission ($35 for children) would drive by the park just to get a look at Verrckt. It details the possibilities of what could potentially happen on the ride known as the Verruckt a German word meaning insane or crazy. Schlitterbahn, meanwhile, is reeling. He flew from Verruckt!'". The raft tipped forward. (The same netting system had been placed on Schlitterbahns Master Blaster rides.) http://wx.wfla.com/oembed/email/noon_signup.html. The camp sat next to the spring-fed Comal River, which gently meanders two and a half miles through New Braunfels before merging with the Guadalupe River. To have committed a crime, they would have had to have known that their actions could result in injury or death. It was faked. In 1998 the New Braunfels Schlitterbahn was named the countrys Best Waterpark in a poll conducted by, In October 2012, Jeff was at an amusement park industry trade show with his chief collaborator, John Schooley, a soft-spoken, silver-haired former yacht builder who had constructed slides at water parks in Asia before coming to New Braunfels to work for Jeff in 1998. According to People. But instead of staying in its fiberglass flume and cresting the hill, the raft flew up into the air. Certified by the Guinness World Records as the worlds tallest, the slide is no stranger to controversy. That boat flew. Her friend Jess Sanford added: "I only saw Caleb slide down the last half of the slide, and then I saw the blood. For what is your life? When Jeff and Schooley erected Verrckt, the state charged, they had knowingly created a deadly weapon. Instead of using fundamental mathematical and physics calculations to design and build the ride, the two men had rushed forward relying almost entirely on crude trial-and-error methods. And although they realized that their finished product guaranteed that rafts would occasionally go airborne in a manner that could severely injure or kill the occupants, they went ahead and opened the ride anyway. Gary and Jana agreed that Jeff should proceed with Verrckt. And the lawyers could argue that the two men were not criminally negligent. Verruckt is one of the water parks main attractions. The two other occupants -- Hannah Barnes and Matraca Baetz -- suffered. Schwab boarded the raft with two women who were not related to him. One is a line from John 3:16. Caleb Schwab, the son of a state lawmaker, sustained a fatal neck injury at around 2:30 p.m. while riding the 168-foot-tall Verruckt (meaning insane in German) water slide, the Associated Press reports. Bearded and scruffy, he almost always wore a dirty, creased ball cap, an old fishing shirt, shorts, and muddy boots. Senator's son, 10, was 'decapitated when he was thrown through raft harness and into safety net before plunging 50ft down the world's tallest waterslide'. He would later attend the University of Texas and major in accounting. A local TV station interviewed a former park lifeguard who said Verrckt had terrified him and his coworkers.We had to ride it three times before we actually opened the park every day, Nathan Campbell said. Caleb Schwab, the son of a state lawmaker, sustained a fatal "neck injury" at around 2:30 p.m. while riding the 168-foot-tall "Verruckt" (meaning "insane" in German) water slide, the Associated. The slide has been closed since Caleb's death on Aug. 7, 2016. Some of his baseball teammates sat in the front row, wearing their jerseys. (In 1994 he pleaded guilty to third-degree felony drug possession after he was caught with seventeen ounces of marijuana.) Some people say that beca Had Jeff discovered his natural talents in almost any industry other than water parks, he might have had a harder time pushing the limits with his creations. One is a line from John 3:16. Jeff came up with an artificial river that he called the Torrent River, where large waves unexpectedly rose and broke around the tubers. Although Jeff and Schooley said they used engineers and architects to help them design Verrckt, they also continued to depend on traditional trial and error. Court documents stated that a team of experts who inspected the slide after Caleb's death found physical evidence that indicated that other rafts had gone airborne and collided with the overhead hoops and netting before the fatality". (At that point, there were fewer than a half dozen water parks around the U.S.) Jeff quickly got on the phone to tell Bob and Billye all about it. The two sisters who had ridden behind Caleb, both of whom suffered facial injuries, also received a settlement, of an undisclosed amount. According to Wikipedia, Caleb Schwab's cause of death was internal decapitation. He said that if he was demanding and impatient, it was because he was consumed with making Schlitterbahn the best water park in the world. Last year a bank in Corpus Christi that held roughly $32 million in debt on that citys Schlitterbahn took ownership of the park, after plans for an attached resort quintupled in size and the projects costs ballooned, eventually forcing the property into foreclosure. I cant begin to describe it.. Soon, reporters from an array of media outlets, This 1981 Photo Essay Captured Why Being an Aggie Is Not at All Funny, The Legend of Old Rip Was Pretty Unbelievable, How Florence ButtNot Her SonLaunched the H-E-B Empire. You read it quietly and are reminded again that Caleb Schwab should still be here. Then, on August 7, 2016, Caleb Schwab and his family arrived at the park. The 168-foot-tall Verruckt is one of the top attractions of Schlitterbahn. I get up every day and think about all the great people who work at Schlitterbahn, he said. A humid breeze presses down on the dead summer grass. Reporters from the San Antonio Express-News also revealed that in September 2013, Jeffs second wife, Louise Settree, had claimed in divorce papers that he had assaulted, battered, beat and tormented her during their nearly five-year marriage and that his use of alcohol and drugs had contributed to the horrific assaults. His treatment of her, Settree claimed, was so extreme in degree . By then, developers from around the country who also wanted a Schlitterbahn were regularly approaching the Henry family with proposals. According to park rules, a Verrckt rider had to be at least 54 inches (4 feet 6 inches) tall. Once again, Jeff later insisted to me that he had been hamming it up for the camera and that he did not in fact see a raft fly off the chute on opening day. I don't even hardly remember driving home.". The State of Kansas also agreed to throw in an estimated $200 million in sales tax revenue bonds. You know the [raft] that went airborne on our ninety-footmodel in New Braunfels? This is the best life I could ever imagine., Jeff was so busy with his own projects that he barely had time to go to New Braunfels High School, and when he did, he often showed up for class barefoot. What Happened To The Boy On The Water Slide? Few details have been released about the death Sunday of Caleb Thomas Schwab, the son of a Kansas state legislator. The slide would become the talk of the amusement park industry, he said. You have reached your limit of 4 free articles. It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes . . According to Texas Department of Insurance spokesman Jerry Hagins, the inspector is charged only with making sure that the ride is in sound condition and meets the manufacturers specifications. In other words, a water park is allowed to police itself. Caleb's head collided with a net and a semicircular metal hoop that arced over the top of the slide. The family had strong ties in the city, including at the LifeMission Church on South Lone . They asked Jeff if he had any projects in the works. But Jeff, the middle child, wasnt interested at all in a formal education. When they reached the runout pool, the three men in the raft shouted and pumped their fists in the air. Tell Jeff were going to let him graduate so that he no longer has to come back to school.. But prosecutors could tell the jury that Jeff and Schooley knew very well that Verrckt could lead to a catastrophe, yet they continued to push forward. It is a seriously dangerous piece of equipment today because there are things that we dont know about it, he said at one point. In October 2012, Jeff was at an amusement park industry trade show with his chief collaborator, John Schooley, a soft-spoken, silver-haired former yacht builder who had constructed slides at water parks in Asia before coming to New Braunfels to work for Jeff in 1998. Onlookers prevented Calebs mother from witnessing the scene. Designers of the waterslide had so many problems they had to delay the grand opening. Witness Kelsey Friedrichsen said she was about to ride the waterslide when she saw emergency responders below covering the boy and attending to the two injured. (Besides the felony conviction in 1994, he was convicted in 2007 on a misdemeanor charge of possession.) Caleb Schwab, 10, died in front of his family while riding a 168ft-high water slide in Kansas at Schlitterbahn Water Park. Today is the fifth anniversary of the traumatic death. He sold his technology for slides and river systems to the Atlantis Paradise Island resort in the Bahamas and to the Palm in Dubai. Some states have agencies that inspect water parks; others rely on the parks own insurance companies to do inspections. Its sort of beautiful, isnt it? she said. Around this time he noticed that some of the people going down his fathers slides were hitting the water too hard. The two men were approached by producers from the Travel Channel who said they were looking for an episode to lead off the new season of their popular TV series Xtreme Waterparks. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission only has jurisdiction over traveling amusement parks, like pop-up carnivals. He always thought he was right., Yet Jeff made no apologies. ), On June 16 of this year, after Id attempted to contact Jeff a half dozen times through his legal team and his family, he called me at 1:26 in the morning. But it didn't, so I worked there. In a field near Schlitterbahns corporate headquarters, in New Braunfels, they constructed a small model of Verrckt, one twelfth the size of the real thing, and they sent a model car down the slide, along with cantaloupes and watermelons, to test it. Advocates say that lack of federal oversight, and the fact that regulations vary by state, is problematic since there is no uniform way to oversee the industry. I get fired up to come to work and take care of those customers.. And he saw before anyone else what we could do in New Braunfels.. They quickly learned that their state, like Texas, allows water parks to be self-inspected. 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